Your Attention Please.... | |
Announcing the first podcast of the MGTOW blogging network. Or "mancast". And yours truly has the honor of doing the first one, with an introduction by Maus. WOOT! I'm excited. No. Really. I am. Hehe.
Here's the link: http://odeo.com/audio/16432213/view
Tell all your friends. Post it anywhere you can think of. Let's get this thing out there, and let people know where we're coming from. Are we misogynists? NO! Are we a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do than complain? NO! Do we want to oppress all womankind? I'd sure be in trouble if we did! Am I, admittedly a woman, a traitor to my own kind? Some think I am. But they're wrong. I want women to know joy, true joy. And how can we know joy if we deny ourselves? Enough of this! Click the link, and enjoy.
Here's the transcript, for those of you who like to follow along: Hello. This is KellyMac.
There has been some discussion recently that there should be some podcasts done addressing some of the issues important to us as MRA's. Now, I know I can't really speak for the men in this movement. As much empathy as I feel, as indignant as I get at the blatant double-standards we see here in the West, I am not a man. I will never be a man, in this life anyway, and I can never really know the experience of being a man in our culture.
I am, however, in the rather unique position of having earned the trust of quite a number of men, and genuinely caring what happens to them. Why do I care? Why wouldn't I? I think anyone who looks around themselves, with the propaganda blinders off, should be able to see that half of the human race is treated with disdain and contempt. That they don't is amazing to me.
What is even more amazing to me is, if you had told me a year and a half ago about this disdain and contempt, I wouldn't know what you're talking about either. Sure, I believed in equal pay for equal work, and that Affirmative Action should be abolished. I also believed that women earned less than men for doing the same jobs and that men used to own their wives, and that we women were all victims of thousands of years of "patriarchal oppression". This was despite clear evidence to the contrary.
We're conditioned from the time we're born to believe certain things, and to see the world through the filter of those beliefs. Anything that doesn't fit in with that worldview, is ignored, or rationalized, or marginalized. I think this affects all of us to a certain extent, but it affects women much more than men. The reasons for this are simple: first, the filter is clearly advantageous to women. Why would you look very closely at something that is benefiting you? Second, as we all know, women are, for lack of a more flattering phrase, "herd creatures". We tend to go along with what our girlfriends are doing. I know there are exceptions to this; but I'm not talking about the exceptions here. I'm talking about the vast majority.
So there I was, living in my fantasy world, unhappy in my life, unhappy in my marriage, using food and the internet to try to fill the emptiness inside. It wasn't working. And then one day, I came across a general referral to a website that addressed how badly we treat men in our culture. Many of you already know that story - many of you were involved in it! I’m not gonna tell it now.
But it brings me to the topic of this podcast: the fact that there is deep beauty and deep feeling in men, and that we as women very often don't realize it.
I am gonna share with you all a little blog posting I made about a year ago. It's called "What The Movement Has Taught Me About Men - So Far".
In the time I have been involved with the men's rights movement, I have had the unique opportunity of listening to men who were pulling no punches, sugar-coating nothing. None of them were trying to be macho, or chivalrous, or accommodating, or any of the various behaviors we not only attribute to, but expect from, men in our western society. It was a little bit scary, and very much an eye-opening experience.
In listening to these men as they talked to each other and to me, I learned something that has literally changed my life. It was this: men have feelings.
Seriously.
I hear what you're saying. "Everyone has feelings, duh!" This is true. But men are capable of far more integrity and depth of emotion than I EVER gave them credit for. A very wise man, whom I am proud to call my friend, told me,
"Look at your own son - at the pure and innocent way he can throw himself body and soul into something which interests him or something he loves. Few women appreciate the depth and intensity of emotion men have. When we love, we love with every fiber of our being. Manginas are proof that a man will give away everything for a woman he really loves."
That's how intense it is. The pain and anger they feel is just as intense. And it is justified. From the time they're boys, we inundate the males of our species with the message that they are brutes, and that the females of our species are their victims.
Think about that for a moment. You're a little boy, who loves his whole world with the intensity of the sun, and you're inundated with messages from tv and school and the daycare provider and, heartbreakingly, your mom and even your dad.
And the messages tell you that domestic violence only occurs from a male to a female, cause everyone knows that a male can't be hurt by a female. They tell you pedophiles only target girls, cause everyone knows that if a boy gets laid by his female teacher, he's a lucky bastard. They tell you men only think with their penis, cause everyone knows men are sex maniacs who think about sex 24 hours a day and rape women cause the penis rules . They tell you women need special advantages because they have been oppressed for hundreds of years by evil men (meaning all men, of course).
I'm just scratching the surface here. None of these things are more than half true, if that, but you don't know that. Hey, you're just a little kid, and why in the world would everyone be lying to you? And besides, there's a really cool bug in the backyard, but better not show it to mom, cause you might be responsible for scaring her.
By the time they grow up, it's no wonder so many men will do anything for a woman's approval. After all, they're brutes by nature and are damn lucky if a woman even lets them pick up her laundry, right? But some men, somehow, see through all the lies. Maybe it's just one lie at first. But when that one crumbles, it leads to another one, and another one, and pretty soon the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
Think about it again. You've grown up trusting the people you love to tell you the truth, and you realize it was all a lie. It wasn't their fault, they were doing the best they could, but they had been lied to as well. You feel betrayed by society itself, and the pain is white hot. I wonder if a person who has not experienced that kind of pain and loss can even imagine the intensity of it. I doubt it.
Suddenly, you don't know what to believe. You can't trust your eyes anymore, because you've lost your frame of reference. I've experienced this myself, folks. It's extremely disorienting and frustrating and scary. But this was their gift to me. I "unplugged" as they call it. And now I can put my finger on what it was that was out of kilter.
You see, I heard all those same messages growing up, and I believed that men couldn't be trusted, because they would oppress me if I let them. I believed men were brutes. And I thought of myself as enlightened and open minded, and I suppose I was, as far as that goes. But when I learned to let myself really trust these guys, I found that they had never lied to me, and that they had answered my questions candidly, and not patronized me. They treated me as they would have anyone they had no reason to trust.
In other words, I was treated with equality.
And you know what? It was a new experience.
And because of that, I was able to see the Truth they were trying to show me. Now, for the first time in my life, I'm comfortable admitting my femininity (although I still have no use for flowers lol). Feminism has robbed us all of so much - of our very lives as they could have been lived. And that's a crying shame. But ladies, it doesn't have to be that way. Men can teach us how to live, and love, and not lie to ourselves anymore. We just have to give them a chance.
I published that piece in August of 2006, and my life has changed so much since then. This past year has been one of revelations and personal growth for me. When I wrote that piece, I was still very new to seeing my world without the blinders. It was overwhelming, and very much an intellectual exercise, because it was really just too much to absorb at once. Since then, it's become natural, and I've been able to use my new clarity to affect some very personal changes.
It’s made me think of how feminism has affected me in the past. For instance, my parents’ marriage. My mom was a huge, unhappy woman. My father, who provided extremely well for us (my mom worked too, off and on), was constantly referred to as “dumbass“, “fucker“, “stupid”, etc. This went on to his face, and behind his back, to anyone who would listen, for 35 years.
After they had been married for those 35 years, she broadened her horizons by finding lots of new friends on the internet, including a new stud. They told her she didn’t have to put up with his shit and so she kicked him out, started “counseling” (which she bragged that he paid for), and proceeded to take him for everything he was worth. Coincidentally, her demand for divorce came right about the time he told her he was retiring. She visited him in the hospital after his bypass surgery, demanding that he sign the divorce papers, giving her everything, including the trailer he was living in.
Now mind you, my dad was no wimp. He was a lumberjack, a hard drinker, and a hard fighter back in the day. He was a man’s man. But he loved her, and his parents’ divorce had caused him no end of pain. Don’t get me wrong, he was no saint. But he was a good man. And he loved her.
At any rate, the last two years of his life turned out pretty well. I got to establish a relationship with him, and he married my stepmother just 6 days before he died. My mother made it a point to let us kids know that she got his social security death benefits on top of everything else, and that she deserved it. Needless to say, she is no longer a part of my life.
I met my husband on my 22nd birthday. He was charming, and funny, and a good talker (i.e. BS Artist). Those were the things I loved about my dad. Also like my dad, my husband had a very rough streak. He was a hard drinker and a fighter.
We wound up married 9 months after we met, and the next 18 years or so was one continuous battle. I gained an enormous amount of weight, and he could do nothing right. He was angry all the time, and talked himself out of job after job. I never wanted to be intimate, and intimacy was the one thing he desperately wanted and needed from me. I was just like my mother; he was just like his step dad. We didn’t know any other way to be.
About 15 years into the marriage, we had a particularly gruesome fight, and he told me that if I didn’t get mental help, he would leave me. I didn’t want him to leave, and I was finally diagnosed with clinical depression, and put on medication. We both worked hard and long, but it wasn’t an easy road. I was still angry at him all the time and wanted no intimacy, and he was still treating me with disrespect and hostility while trying to control my behavior.
About 17 years or so into the marriage, I discovered the Men’s Rights Movement. I discovered how I had been lied to by my parents’ modeling, and by feminism. I realized that my mother was a man-hating, self-hating uberfeminazi, and I was in many ways just like her. I started questioning my perceptions, and became an activist. But my husband’s and my relationship still didn’t change much. I was just reaching the conclusion that I didn’t want to live that way anymore, and seriously starting to consider divorce.
I had gastric bypass surgery, and could no longer eat to fill the emotional void, and I turned to the internet. My husband started suspecting me of having an internet affair, and he started showing up unexpectedly (he worked nights at the time), hoping to catch me doing something I shouldn’t. Both of our behavior, of course, just pushed us further apart.
One day, he called me at work and informed me that we had an appointment with a local addiction counselor because of my internet addiction. I was frankly just tired of the whole thing, but I went along with it. And in seeing this therapist, we both realized that we both had incredibly horrible childhoods, where our mothers were man-hating, domineering bitches. Feminism at its best.
Since then, we’re both working very hard at undoing the damage that was done to us as children, and that we have done to each other. He has assumed a very masculine role in our relationship, and I have assumed a very feminine role. This doesn’t mean we feel we have to live up to stereotypes; it simply means that we finally found out it was ok to be what we really are inside. It doesn’t mean that he is a brute. It doesn’t mean that I am weak and mindless. We are partners now, in the way we were meant to be from the beginning. In the way all men and women are meant to be.
As a result, he as assumed much more personal responsibility in our marriage. He has the final decision-making power (this doesn’t mean my input means any less than it always did, ladies), he has quit drinking, and he has become the man I needed him to be. And I learned that I don’t have to be domineering and in control, and he really does fine without my constant input (i.e. nagging and bitching). Our relationship is now literally better than it has ever been. And it keeps getting better.
And about the intimacy? Well, let’s just say we’re spending a lot of “quality” time together.
Thanks for listening. If you want to learn more about me, or read more of my work, my blog is available at a couple of places: http://awomanagainstfeminism.blogspot.com, and http://blog.antimisandry.com/kellymac. I also have a page on the Honor Network, where I specialize in False Accusations and highlight the US west coast. That address is: http://www.honornetwork.com/Kelly_Mac.html. I host a forum called "KellyMac's Coffeehouse and Reading Room" at http://kellymac.adamsspace.com, and finally, my email address is kelly.ladymac@gmail.com. More...   |
18th-August-2007
I wish there were some way to meet you in person...finally, a female I think I could trust and be friends with! But we're on opposite ends of the country!
